Andrew Luck to Revive Indianapolis Colts

Fans have been waiting for Luck, and in some case praying for Luck since April of 2011. We watched the Suck for Luck competition play out during the 2011 NFL season.

For the first time in years, there was actually a viable reason to be the worst team in the league.

Now that the formalities are out of the way, it is official that Andrew Luck has been brought on to be the future of the Indianapolis Colts franchise.

Although the certainty that Luck would be the first man picked in the NFL Draft has been upon us for the past week, the excitement that he single-handedly managed to generate for the better part of a year has certainly lent itself to making this one of the most exciting first rounds ever.

Robert Griffin III’s Dark Horse Comeback

Of course, we have known for the past week that Indianapolis was committed to Luck but that doesn’t make the fact that Robert Griffin III managed to disrupt the buzz around Andrew Luck any less amazing.

R.G. III stands poised to make a name for himself in the NFL that will rival Andrew Luck’s impact. Given that he arguably has a better corps of offensive talent surrounding him for the 2012 season, it is arguable that he could actually have a better freshman year in the NFL than his counterpart.

Historic Quarterback Depth

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There have only been four other times in history when the top two picks in the NFL Draft have both been quarterbacks.

Individually, Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III show every sign of putting together dominating performances in the NFL for years to come. If they can each uphold their share of that promise, they represent a tandem pair that has the chance to make history.

The previous four quarterback pairs have each evolved into one success and one failure:

Tons of Traded Picks

At times, it felt more like Wall Street than like the NFL Draft with all of the trades flying around.

There are plenty of teams with needs that they preferred to fill through the NFL Draft instead of through free agency.

Many of those teams gave in to the temptation to pay for the privilege of grabbing their choice players early, while others gladly accepted the surplus that trading down can bring. That amount of movement really made the draft exciting to watch and kept fans checking in frequently.

Fan Behavior

It may not have been flattering to the fans who were actually participating in the behavior, but there was plenty of entertaining audience action being picked up by the microphones.

The audience wasn’t just involved when it came to cheering for their team or for a particular player when he was drafted. There were plenty of derogatory yells off the camera, including a long, loud chant of “Dolphins Suck.”

Perhaps the most interesting and entertaining was the frequent—and heartfelt—booing every time Commissioner Rodger Goodell took the stage.

Upsetting the Experts

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There’s no faster way to blow through an expert’s mock draft than to execute draft-day trades, and that’s exactly what many teams in the NFL conspired to do.

All of the time spent over the past several months putting together mock drafts and predictions was nullified the moment that the second draft-day trade gave the Jaguars the fifth overall draft pick in lieu of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

With the first few picks all but set in stone weeks before the actual day of the draft, there was plenty of excitement in breaking away from the expert predictions and forge ahead into unexpected territory.

Fast-Paced Action

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Despite the best efforts of the media to extend the opening rounds of the draft to give each new recruit into the NFL his due, the action moved along at a breakneck pace as teams chomped at the bit to add to their ranks.

There were several points when it seemed as though teams were actually jumping the gun and making their draft picks while the team before them was still waiting for theirs to be announced.

The action was fast and furious for the first 45 minutes of the draft, with Tampa Bay using their seventh overall pick to become the first team to come even close to taking the full amount of time in making their selection.

Even after that, things never really slowed down. The first round of the draft lasted for just over three hours even with all of the commercial breaks, a far shorter time span than we have seen in previous years.

Standout Talent

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There are plenty of positions that are standard areas of need that teams pick in the first round of the draft, particularly linebacker and wide receiver. What set this year aside was the standout talent available at almost all of them.

For quarterback (Andrew Luck), running back (Trent Richardson), tackle (Matt Kalil), cornerback (Morris Claiborne), wide receiver (Justin Blackmon), and more there was a single player whose name has become synonymous with talent.

Those players whose abilities are so far above their peers are perhaps the single biggest reason that this draft was as entertaining as it ended up being. The jockeying for position in the draft in order to acquire these players was both disruptive and exciting to everyone involved.